


Hear No Evil; See No Evil

by redactredact



Series: S.S. Natatouille [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Drabble Collection, Multi, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Polyamory, Rare Pairings, What if movie Clint was actually Fraction comics Clint?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-04 15:35:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4143150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redactredact/pseuds/redactredact
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nat and Matt met first, somewhere in the Kitchen, both in tactical catsuits. There were Russians. It was a thing.</p><p>Nat introduced Matt and Clint and fully expected them to bond over their needlessly broken noses and affinity for making her job that much harder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hear No Evil; See No Evil

**Author's Note:**

> A few thoughts, and a few scenes.

Nat and Matt met first, somewhere in the Kitchen, both in tactical catsuits. There were Russians. It was a thing.

Nat introduced Matt and Clint and fully expected them to bond over their needlessly broken noses and affinity for making her job that much harder. After some initial confusion, they realized they’d already met: Matt, because he was Matt, had gotten thrown into a dumpster where Clint was already hiding. Clint, because he was Clint, had a rather memorable scent—stale pizza, wet dog, and a hint of Nat, which Matt had found suspicious at the time but was too busy not dying to remember to pursue.

Nat is always off running missions and Clint is alternating between SHIELD ops and schlubbing around and Matt just sort of hangs out in the Kitchen, because Matt has a Day Job. It makes him, weirdly, the most stable. They can come home to him.

They’ve got the long-distance thing down to a science: Clint Skypes Nat, Nat calls Matt, Nat attempts to listen to Matt via headset while signing with Clint. It’s an uphill battle on the SHIELD helicarriers, whose wifi connections are notoriously fickle, but they make do.

Matt is the only one who can cook. Otherwise Nat and Clint would live on pizza and cereal when they come around. Nat thinks Matt cooks like the rat in Ratatouille: he has no training and no clue what he’s doing and has to smell and taste until it’s perfect, and his ill-fated attempts to teach Clint to cook usually result in hair-pulling and small fires and threats that someone’s going to get punched in the dick.

Nat ends up wearing stuff other women have left at Matt’s apartment half the time, but it’s not a big deal. They’re open about it. And, as Clint tells Matt, she’s one of those rare, impossible women who looks great in basically anything anyway. Both of them steal Matt's shirts.

They’re all always getting the crap beaten out of them.

They’re all fucked up, internally and individually. They’re good at communication because they have to be. Everyone knows everyone else’s secret identity, but they also know everyone has triggers and issues and dark places that ought not be trodden into without invitation. They’re landmines, they’re mousetraps, wound tight and ready to snap. But they’re learning to walk without rhythm. They’re learning to keep their own peace, even in pieces.

Nat gets mad when Matt and Clint refuse to seek professional medical attention. Matt gets mad when they forget about civilians, about street level crime—some people can’t just pretend this isn’t happening, like they can, and the Avengers are escapism at its finest. Clint has an overprotective streak a mile long and they’re not sure if he _can_ get mad, just quiet and sad and disappointed.

They’re good at shutting each other out when shit gets bad, but they always come through to the other side. Matt unplugs his ears. Clint turns away from the wall and puts his aids back in. Natasha takes a long walk, but she comes back. She always comes back. Sometimes she even comes back with cannoli from that place Matt likes.

Clint never washes his damn dishes. Nat’s hair clogs drains. Matt has stepped on crap they’ve left lying around more than once, and his patience is infuriating.

Nat thinks Claire is good for Matt. She’s being honest when she says it’s a shame it didn’t work out.

Clint hates Foggy, but only at first—only until they get gloriously trashed together and Clint is made an honorary avocado.

Karen starts out terrified of Nat. A week later, they’re texting constantly. Two weeks after that, they’re borrowing each other’s clothes. In a month, Karen’s considering going red and Foggy’s developed trust issues he may never overcome.

On at least three separate occasions, Nat and Clint argue over how strangely similar Matt’s ass looks to Steve’s. Matt is horrified when they actually drag Steve down to the Kitchen for brunch, but of course Steve is a perfect gentleman about it. At least for the first ten minutes. The rest of brunch is dominated by Matt and Steve giving Delta Team shit for being transplants.

Matt and Steve do not have a fight over where to get the best pizza in the city. They do make a pact to protect the joint from Tony’s demolition spree, whether in suits and masks or suits and ties.

When Tony, being Tony, finds out about all this, he responds in classic Tony fashion: “Wait, you two are—? Okay. Great. Who’s the other guy?” The second Nat tells Tony he’s a lawyer, he backs right the fuck off. Tony Stark is not a fan of lawyers who don’t already work for him and can’t be bought.

When Matt visits Stark Tower, JARVIS has to recalibrate himself to use a single speaker voice source, because surround sound is hell. Tony makes Matt sign a waiver stating that the Avengers and Stark Industries cannot be held responsible for any harm he may endure while on SI property. Tony also warns him that there’s a giant hole in the center of the sitting room floor, so, watch out for that.

Tony isn’t actually sure where Hell’s Kitchen _is_. He thinks it might be in Jersey.

 

* * *

 

It's only a game.

It doesn't feel like a game when he lets himself into Matt's apartment and there's a knife at his throat before he can even reach for the lightswitch. Not when the door swings closed behind him, cutting off the light from the hallway. He's at the mercy of the dim glow from Matt's pet billboard, which would be more than enough if there wasn't already a knife at his throat.

Sometimes he forgets how good Nat is at what she does.

A hand at his back nudges him forward, but the knife makes him slow, cautious. Chin up. Careful. He knows his quiver's stashed on the other side of the divider that splits entry from kitchen, but Nat keeps her knives impossibly sharp and he's not an idiot.

Wait. No.

That's not quite right.

He's a _complete_ idiot.

"Nat," he half-whispers, and the knife twists sharply, its point pressing against the soft skin covering his jugular.

_Wrong call, Barton._

"Nat's not home right now," growls the person behind him, and that's _so_ not Nat. "You'll have to leave a message."

Clint grins stupidly and tries not to swallow against the knife. Matt's always been a fucking moron when it comes to banter.

"Standard rules apply?" Clint asks like he's not a few millimeters of knife from bleeding out on Matt's clean carpet. (He should know. He vacuums. Nobody else around here ever vacuums.)

Matt sighs. Which, in Clint's opinion, totally doesn't work with his whole scary growling dark-alley persona thing. Clint's never understood persona things. Nat's all persona from bone to skin to flat-ironed hair.

"No, dipshit, it's Capture the Flag," he says, gravel gone from his voice. Clint feels the knife shift, just a fraction of an ounce, enough to put him at slightly less imminent risk of getting himself stabbed for breathing wrong. "Were you even _conscious_ when we—"

"HAMMER!" a woman's voice—Nat's voice—screeches from across the apartment and Clint drops, fast. Matt stands puzzled and a little bit lost for about a quarter of a second, until a twenty-pound vase comes flying at his head.

(“Aww, vase.”)

 

* * *

 

She's been a soldier for longer than any of them, and she's never gotten used to sleeping without her back to the wall. It's not safe, no matter how many gods and supermen there are on the plane, no matter how many warriors are sharing her bed.

She doesn't like headphones, either. Too risky. Someone could sneak up, easily—she's done it herself enough times, to May on the treadmill and to Sitwell at his desk and to Morse in the hallway outside Fury's office when they were all green little shits learning their way around the Triskelion for the first time. So she doesn't listen to music, really, not until she finds out about Matt's sound system and lifts Steve's iPod (call it recon) and Matt comes home from a busy day of lawyering to find her sitting in the middle of his (locked) apartment, silent and absolutely still, to the tune of Ella Fitzgerald crooning something about heaven, something about dancing.

She holds her eyes closed as he shuts the door behind him, focused, hearing and acknowledging and pushing aside the rustle of bills on the kitchen counter and the soft thump of his bag onto a chair. Ella's singing about a gambler and she isn't used to following lyrics, but the sound is good, through decades and layers of remastery, processing, Sam's quick tutorial on the iTunes store and Steve's tendency to pick whatever version the reviews tell him is the best.

Something about mountains.

Matt sets his glasses and cane to the side, somewhere Clint probably won't dislodge them when he inevitably turns up (it's his turn to bring the beer), and shrugs off his jacket, slowly, trying desperately not to interrupt.

Ella finishes.

Nat's eyes flash open, green—Matt doesn't even know it, but he's always liked women with green eyes, especially if they wear a lot of skintight black and occasionally almost get him killed.

She stands. She has more grace than Matt and Clint combined, not because they're the kinds of human disasters that physics loves to hate, but because before she was a soldier, she was a dancer.

Matt has never seen her dance, but when she drapes her arms around his neck—she's tiny, everyone always forgets—and he rests his hands gently on her waist, she thinks he gets the picture.

 

* * *

 

Matt has his apartment in the Kitchen and Clint has his run-down building in Bed-Stuy and Natasha is the stray cat that everyone thinks they own but nobody does, nobody can. SHIELD issues her an apartment. Tony offers her a floor in Stark Tower. So she wanders from borough to borough, letting herself in and accepting the waiting gifts of food that clearly, if unlabeled, must have been left for her.

Clint’s supposed to have a floor in the Tower too, but Tony’s pretty sure he’s never set foot inside. He likes what Tony thinks of as the “rough parts of town” a little too much. Tony thinks anything outside the UES is rough and has threatened to wear his suit next time he comes to Clint’s neighborhood. Clint insists that there won’t be a next time.

(Tony makes a crack about him dating a big-shot lawyer; Clint sics Lucky on him.)

Nat notes that one of the perks of having your own floor in Stark Tower is that when Tony and Thor get you hammered (hah) at an Avengers party, your options are not limited to _struggle into a cab_ or _grovel_. Matt’s laugh is rough—he can’t remember the last time he drank this much without Foggy, and he’s not sure he likes it, but he slings one arm over her shoulders and the other over Clint’s and lets them lead the way.

“I like Thor,” he says with a quirking smile as Clint leans away to close the door behind them. “‘s a nice guy. Friendly.”

“Too friendly,” Clint replies and rolls his eyes.

“Well, we did warn you—bed, behind you,” and Natasha’s levering him off her shoulder to sit on the duvet. Silk. Of course it’s silk, because, Tony. Matt’s already wondering what it’d take to get himself this kind of hookup.

“They’re real friendly people.” Clint, opening and closing drawers across the room.

“They like you,” Natasha says. He can hear the grin in it. “You were already sort of an honorary Avenger anyway—”

Matt snorts.

“Hardly! It's not like I ever go with you guys to. Um. Places.”

Clint closes another drawer with a laugh. “D’we ever run into the big guys in your neck of the woods? I think not. It’s like, uh.” He pauses, hunting for the word. “Territorial?”

“You’re a specialist in local affairs,” corrects Nat, and she believes every word of it. “It’s better they don’t show up, for stuff like—”

“Naaaaaaaat!” Clint groans, pulling open the door to an obscenely large walk-in closet. It’s about the size of Matt’s entire apartment, which is already like twice the size of Clint’s apartment, which is definitely bigger than the shoeboxes SHIELD provides. “Why’d we go to _your_ floor? You _knew_ there were gonna be clothes, and this is all…”

“Girly?”

“Tiny.”

“And petty!” Matt calls from the bed. He’s sprawled out, feet still grazing the floor, tie long forgotten somewhere by the bar. The duvet cover is silk, the pillowcases are even _finer_ silk, and he’s going to sleep here with or without them.

Nat sighs, and he knows it comes with the head-tilt and dropped shoulders that mean she’s taking care of it, whatever it is. “Two minutes.” And she disappears.

The mattress dips heavily as Clint flops down next to Matt and kicks off his shoes.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Clint mumbles, scooting closer. He can feel the heat of his body, smell Tony’s expensive whiskey on his breath. “There was an, uh, thing, involving Tony not having boundaries. About, like, doors.” He sniffs and rubs at his nose. “Says it’s his house an’ all, which technically, it is, but.”

“A thing?” Matt asks, turning his head so his face is visible. He’s still got his glasses on, but Clint’s going to take out his aids any minute.

“Don’ worry about it,” Clint says, and he doesn’t. They lay there in silence for a few seconds before Clint offers, “Pajama pants.”

Matt realizes then, and laughs, and laughs harder, curling into a ball on the silk duvet.

“Wait,” he wheezes. “Did he walk in on—”

The door swings open with a soft hydraulic hiss and there she is again—borrowed perfume, gunpowder, and tequila, and a hint of Clint, and fresh laundry in her arms.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta lallowethyu for infinite patience and indulgence, and to caralarm for suffering right along with me. Shipping rare pairs is the worst. I am so sorry.
> 
> UPDATE: Thanks to caralarm for the [brilliant mix](http://8tracks.com/femaelstrom27/hear-no-evil-see-no-evil) that pairs with this AU!


End file.
